Tuesday, March 22, 2016

A Record Brewing

Got a hankering for a local beer? You're in luck: There are now more
U.S. breweries than at any other point in recorded American history.
According to data
released today by the Brewers Association, there were 4,269 operating
breweries in the country at the end of 2015, surpassing the previous
record logged all the way back in 1873 when a lack of transportation and
refrigeration meant breweries had to be local.
"Prior to the late 1800s, the market for breweries was essentially the
distance a horse drawn cart could travel out and back in a day," Bart
Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, said in an e-mail.
As the invention of refrigerated railcars and pasteurization expanded
the range beer could travel, the number of breweries fell rapidly. That
is, until the craft beer movement came to life in the 1980s, a trend
that has continued to grow for decades....
Big-name beer companies may still churn out more barrels, but small and
independent breweries comprise 99 percent of the total breweries in
operation by count, according to the Brewers Association. At the end of
2015, there were 2,397 microbreweries, 1,650 brewpubs and 178 regional
craft breweries, preliminary data from the not-for-profit trade group
show.